Despite spending a lot of time this past
quarter confined (by choice, mainly) to Calhoun County, I have
nonetheless logged a lot of miles up and down I-94. Along
which byway I have seen a lot of billboards for different cannabis
businesses.
Rather a lot of them, in fact.
Which leads me to a question, since none of these places were
things 2 years ago:
What were all of their employees doing
before marijuana was legalized in Michigan, and who's doing it
now?
I mean, it's not like every cannabis worker could have
been plucked from the ranks of video stores.
(Fun fact: While I was polishing this entry, the Hawaiian radio
station I listen to at work had its programming interrupted for a
"local" commercial, that was for a cannabis dispensary located
in...Reno and Carson City, Nevada. The 21st century is an
amazing and occasionally puzzling thing.)
M-->
15 December 02020 (Happy birthday!): A Joyous Fonighm To All, And
To All A Good Day
This came in the morning's email from Politico's London
Playbook
CHRISTMAS WOBBLE:
Downing Street faces difficult questions this morning over its
plan to relax coronavirus restrictions for a five-day period
over Christmas, as a surge in cases in London and the south east
and a new
strain of the virus raise the specter of a third
wave. Playbook really doesn’t want to be a Grinch and talk down
everyone’s chances of seeing their families, but this is where
the conversation is heading as the capital goes into Tier 3
tonight, just eight days before the festival of nationwide
inter-generational household mixing is supposed to get underway.
Boris Johnson has been absolutely determined to allow families
some brief semblance of normality — but that position is going
to come under intense scrutiny in the coming days.
I highlight this because calling Christmas "the
festival of nationwide inter-generational household mixing"
is at once about as sterile a description of any holiday as one
might reasonably hope for and an amusing commentary on 02020.
Tragically, "fonighm" isn't likely to catch on as an acronym*,
although it's appropriate that it looks ever-so-vaguely
Welsh. Or at least Welsh-adjacent. Cornish (RIP),
maybe.
Bravo, London.
M--> (who would ordinarily favor
some holiday chaos but recognizes that it's highly unlikely for
all of the usual and some of the unusual reasons)
*--Okay, maybe it will with me.
11 December 02020: Addendum for Advent
Steve from Allen Park, MI sends along the following:
Maybe there should be a different list of
Christmas covers we don’t need. Like anyone other than Jose
Feliciano doing Feliz Navidad.
That would be a very long list.
A very. long. list.
All the Jose-free versions of FN is a good start. Any
version of LC that is without Wham! also qualifies.
Many holiday classics are that way because of definitive versions
that should be left alone. Indeed, one could get off to
an excellent start simply by looking at this graph and saying "No
more remakes of any of these songs. Especially The Little
Drummer Boy*".
I've railed against remakes rather a bit in the ACME/AVMX series;
it's always worth reinforcing the "Write (or record) something new,
people!" mantra. In the case of Carly Rae Jepsen, though, it's
especially disappointing to see a remake, since she's also got a
nifty new tune out this year: "It's Not Christmas Till Somebody
Cries".
Consider this an extra to AVMX-11, bringing us to 111 songs in
total.
That
would refer to the place in line of this year's list of unjustly
overlooked holiday tunes*, not the length of the list, which
remains fixed at the standard-since-02014 length of 10
songs. (While that’s a YouTube hyperlink, TGE is
most assuredly not a holiday tune.)
Observation:
In assembling these annual lists, I typically work from
notes put together as much as a year earlier, without giving
much thought to the sound of the songs. When I pulled
the audio tracks all together**, I was struck as to how
incredibly variable these sounds of the season turned out to
be. Holiday radio tends to be more jarring than other
formats in its transitions, but this year turned out to be
very eclectic.
Which is probably a good thing.
1. To
Christmas! (The Drinking Song), Straight No Chaser.
The a cappella crew makes its 4th appearance, tying the Trans-Siberian Orchestra,
as it kicks off this year's decet. “What the holidays need
is a drinking song in the form of a countdown” has not been
thought often enough, perhaps, but it’s good that these guys
did. Commendably, they did not take the 99 Bottles of
Beer on the Wall route and sing out all of the days in the
countdown.
And a reference in song
to New Year’s Eve is always welcome ‘round these parts.
2. I Want
An Elephant For Christmas, The Caroleers. Because
anyone*** can ask for a hippopotamus. This one’s a bit
more creative in the large-animal-as-gift category. It
comes from the Santa Claus Is Coming To Town album,
which seems to have some potential for future editions of this
list.
3. Christmas
All Over Again, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers.
One from the “mainstream artists recording their own Christmas
music rather than going the remake route”. This needs to
be encouraged. Say what you will about "Last Christmas" and "Whamageddon", the rush
to avoid it each year--but George and Andy at least had the
decency to record something new.
5. The
Season's Upon Us, Dropkick Murphys. The
group's name involves the word "Dropkick", and the album is
called Signed and Sealed in Blood. Surely fun is
not far off, one thinks.
One would be
correct. The video is also kind of amusing.
Something I only
noticed late in the writing game: This is the only song in this
year's edition of AVMX that doesn't have the word "Christmas" in
its title. Interesting, and completely unintentional, but
it's the first list with such a heavy ration of songs that state
their 25 December intent up front.
Entry #6 causes one to think of Stan Freberg's Green
Chri$tma$, which is at once a comedy Christmas
classic and ineligible for inclusion on these lists by virtue of
not being (comparatively) obscure.
A
song within that sketch uses the title of this 01960 song as a
recurrent phrase, if not, perhaps, a title.
Which makes for a nice connection between #6 and #7.
And AVMX tries to
include one "gone too long" tune per year.
That adds up to justification on
multiple fronts. Enjoy.
8. Moonbows
For Christmas, Amy Hanaiali`i Gilliom.
Speaking of green Christmases, here’s a song from Hawaii.
With Colbie Caillat and Imua, that's a hat trick of Hawaiian
tunes beyond MK that have been racked up here.
Fun fact; The concept of a
moonbow goes back at least as far as Aristotle.
Less fun fact: Moonbows
are typically so faint that the human eye cannot make out the
colors. To the vast majority of us, they're
all-white. Long-exposure photography makes the colors
visible.
9. A Willie
Nice Christmas, Kacey Musgraves f/ Willie Nelson. In
a season where the nation seems to be getting much more liberal,
for better or worse, about marijuana****, the time is not far
from right for this. Lyrics like “leave some special
cookies out for Santa” admit to a less nefarious interpretation,
but I’m not sure anyone can put a drug-free spin on “may we all
stay higher than the angel on top of the tree”.
10. Christmas
Tips, Richard Kind. Parody is layered on top
of parody in this one--which means it's very much at home in
AVMX. Another in the "Christmas Tunes from Unlikely
Places" file, this one was written by John Mulaney for the Documentary
Now! TV series and sung by a terrific character
actor (Mad About You, Spin City, Curb Your Enthusiasm,
Red Oaks, Married--and the list goes on). CT
comes from the "cast album" of Co-Op.
The cast album took 24
hours to record, if the album cover is to be believed. (A
big "if", I'll admit.)
The show ran for one
night, also according to the album cover.
It's nice that we have
a show relic in this paean to holiday gratuities, sung by a doorman.
Io Saturnalia!
M-->
*–All
eleven (in reverse order) may be found here, of course.
**--I have all 110 songs on a flash drive.
My memory game is to hit "shuffle" on that when I'm
driving and try to name the 110th song to be played,
which is a challenge that typically runs over several
days. I'm 1 for 1 this year.
***–Anyone
can, but most people really shouldn't, though, including Kacey
Musgraves and LeAnn Rimes (The Markives, 26 December
02018). Also, to be honest, anyone over the age of 12.
****--Pardon
me. Cannabis.
9 December 02020 (Happy birthday!): Avoiding The Obvious
Dan from East Lansing, MI was quick to alert me
to this bit from The
Guardian on the latest development from the Olympics:
that breakdancing (Pardon me. "Breaking".) will be
added to the Games menu in 02024, thus stretching the meaning of
"game" that much further toward its breaking point.
Which seems curious and curiously appropriate.
So I learned that breakdancing is still apparently a thing among
youth, which was a mild surprise.
There's enough obvious mockery out there that I'm going another
way. This is an opportunity to strike a blow for both sports
and arts. The original Olympics were a cultural festival
that included such things as choral singing alongside the
sports. It's time to revive that--by moving all
of the judged exhibitions to a separate festival.
And we sit at the perfect moment in time to pull that
off. The 02020 Summer Games got moved to 02021 because,
well, you know. Let's use this as a springboard: In 02025,
and every 4 years thereafter, there should be an Olympics of
Judged Exhibitions (there's a better name out there [Spring
Olympics?], and someone will surely find it). Figure
skating, ice dancing, gymnastics (artistic and rhythmic),
synchronized swimming & diving, trampolining, etc.--all the
judged stuff--could move to this exhibition Games and meet up with
breakdancing. "Dancesport", which is the name for
competitive ballroom dancing as it's tried to get under the rings,
could be folded in.
The TV ratings would doubtless be great--figure skating and
gymnastics are, after all, where a lot of viewer eyes are to be
found in Olympic years. The sports fans would have a better
time in the even-numbered years. It would leave some room
for some actual sports who have been parked on the outside for
years--including but not limited to squash, which was a focus of
that Guardian article. Everyone wins.
Make it happen, IOC.
M-->
2 December 02020: Life Imitating Art--Not
In the Odyssey Quartet (2001, 2010, 2061, and 3001), the
monoliths were of alien origin and were intended as a catalyst of
intelligence.
The prisms in Utah and Romania are neither. Indeed, given
some of the reports out there, one might regard these structures
as inhibitors of intelligence (Today
I learned that "inhibitor" is the official antonym of
"catalyst"). The fact that blood was found on the Utah prism
makes one wonder. A lot.
M-->
30 November 02020: Prelude to ACME-17/AVMX-11
Back in 02011, when I put up the second
collection of underheard holiday
tunes, I included Simon & Garfunkel's 7:00
News/Silent Night. I suggested that this could be
re-recorded each year with the news segment updated for the times,
and opined that "This could be a (depressing) annual
tradition. That of course, is only sort of a good thing."
Someone has done it: In what might be the most suitable of all
recent years to remake this combination, Phoebe Bridgers has
looped Fiona Apple and Matt Berninger into collaborating on an
update. Experience it
here (it's hard to say "Enjoy" as the verb there.).
M-->
30 November 02020: Non-Travel Notes With Another Month Down
I have not left Calhoun County during the month of
November. The confinements in both space and time end
tomorrow.
I have yet to set foot in Allen Park--or anywhere Downriver,
for that matter--in 02020. The closest I've come is a
parking lot near Metro Airport, but that was in the before
times, in the long-long-ago.
And so we continue in the quest for the new
normal.
M-->
21 November 02020 (25 years later): Observation on a
Quarter-Century
At least I hope that things revert to something more sensible so
that they won't believe it all.
M-->
16 November 02020 (Happy birthday yesterday and tomorrow!): Very
Slightly Ahead of the Crowd
So my employer was a couple of days ahead of the governor, and we're
almost all-online starting today.
The one very minor silver lining in all of this (online courses at
double speed is something else that professor school did not prepare
me for) is that my looming case of "mask beard" is probably going to
subside. That's like "hat hair", but more amusing.
It helped that I was so isolated yesterday that I never needed to
put on a mask.
M-->
10 November 02020 (Happy anniversary!): A Start Toward
Balance
My email file of American frustration (The Markives, 2 October 02019) hit 2990 as
Election Day dawned last week--up over 1300 emails (> 3 more per
day, and that's with checks against duplication in place) since we
checked in last year. It's gotten a bit bigger in the week
since then.
Under the heading of "I should have done this a long time ago", I
started up a new folder on 1 November for encouraging emailed news
about the country. It's at 9 right now.
The race is on.
M-->
4 November 02020*, 1030 AM EST: Quote O' The Day, Amid Sunrise,
Green Grass, And Uncertainty
As an occasional dabbler in statistics, I found this of interest
during the current wait:
A key question moving forward is whether
public opinion polling is irreparably broken
or if polling is just broken in elections with Trump on the
ballot. — Nathan
Gonzales of Inside Elections.
Food for thought, though perhaps difficult to
study.
M-->
*--Also known as "The Morning
After The Night Before", with apologies to Shelley B.
3 November 02020: A Curious Mixture of Dread and Hope, Though
Perhaps Not in Equal Proportion
The sun will, with very high probability, rise tomorrow
morning. Also, most--perhaps all--of us reading this will
still be on the green side of the grass then.
Anything after that is a bonus.
M-->
2 November 02020 (In the homestretch of The Most
Important Election Of Our Lives This YearTM): Tune For Tuesday
I'm loading this up today because I want to be able to access this
song from the moment I get to work tomorrow: From the Capitol Steps:
Admittedly, it's from 01996, but the overarching sentiment at the
beginning is perhaps even more applicable today than it was then.
M-->
30 October 02020: Where Have You Gone, Simon Bond? A Nation Turns
Its Lonely Eyes To You*
Simon, is, of course, the author of that
seminal text 101 Uses for a Dead Cat, something that the
world seems to need.
So this happened today: I was talking about calculus, as I often
do, and mentioned that while products of powers of trig functions
are relatively uncommon in the wild, right triangles are
not. Indeed, I said, there are places where you can't swing
a dead cat without hitting a right triangle.
Now, one thing about masks is that they make it very difficult to
read the audience. Even with fabric barriers, though, I
could tell that the students (there were only 5 of them in class,
so it was easy to do a census rather than a sample) weren't sure
how serious I was, nor how they ought to respond to that possible
violation of a deceased feline carcass.
On some questioning, it turned out that none of them had ever
heard the phrase "can't swing a dead cat without..." before.
And so my efforts to educate the youth of America took an odd left
turn. I also told them to ask their parents--and grandparents, if
necessary--to confirm that I was not pulling that phrase out of
nowhere.
(By the way, I have never swung a dead cat, although I did once
put a bit of a spin on a dead squirrel while removing it from
inside my house.)
M-->
*--Apologies to Paul and Arthur.
15 October 02020*: An Alternate Programming Suggestion
If I'm Joe Biden**, my outline for tonight's televised town hall
looks something like this:
Camera opens on a shot of BIDEN seated in an
easy chair. A large television set is in the background.
BIDEN: My fellow Americans, good evening. Let's all watch
the President self-destruct together, shall we? BIDEN turns on the TV, which is tuned to a station showing
the President's town hall. The show runs its course.
BIDEN: Thank you, and good night.
M-->
*--19 days until The Most Important Election Of Our Lives This
YearTM. (I voted today, so I'm done with it all.)
**--I am not. This sort of thinking may be why.
8 October 02020 (Happy birthday yesterday!), 1109 AM EDT:
Rapid Response
I haven't seen anyone else say this yet, though I am sure that
someone has:
When the top story out of your debate is an
insect, nothing happened.
Even allowing for the monumentally low expectations by which any
Vice-Presidential debate is judged*, one may safely say that those
of us who tuned out last night missed nothing.
Carry on, America.
M-->
*--The only reason why this one might have been more
than homeopathically interesting (Spoiler alert: It wasn't.) was as a preview of
a possible 02024 Presidential debate.
24 September 02020*: Current Events Intrude
There are several options for fixing Presidential elections that
aren't going to happen anytime soon. Thoughtful readers may
want to reflect on why that is.
1. Abolish the Electoral College and elect Presidents by popular
vote.
Involves amending the Constitution, which is a nonstarter. Too
many people are afraid of the "disenfranchising the small states"
theory, and very few are concerned about "only a handful of swing
states really matter" when electing a President. (As a
resident of one of those states, I wouldn't mind mattering a bit
less if it'd cut down on the TV ads.)
2. Abolish the electors, but keep the Electoral College.
Electoral votes are automatically awarded without the anitclimax
stretching through December and January.
Solves the whole "faithless electors" issue. Still involves
Constitutional amendment, but less radically so. Still a
nonstarter.
3. It seems like there'd be a stronger case for leaving things
alone if the system's contradiction occasionally produced a
stellar leader.
I was kind of intrigued by this
list of Presidents who lost the popular vote but won the
electoral vote.
Five names, not a gem among them. Three of the five were
either sons or grandsons of former Presidents**, which might be more
than an entertaining coincidence.
Unrelated: Can we, as a country, disabuse ourselves of the notion
that electoral concessions matter? I've seen way too many
pixels spilt on this idea lately.
Conceding an election has no bearing on the outcome--rather the
opposite--and if someone concedes an election but is later found to
have the most votes, s/he wins anyway.
Also unrelated: I don't think that the Constitution provides for
someone's dying wish about her/his successor to be considered in the
judicial appointment process.
M-->
*--Fun (well, maybe only sort of) fact: Though I
live less than an hour's walk from a county line, I have not left
Calhoun County since before Labor Day. This is an accidental
side effect of Laurie moving back to Albion, I suppose, but I
still need to put an end to that streak.
**--That is, every President who was the son or grandson
of a former President got into office by losing the popular vote
and winning in the Electoral College. Hmmm.
8 September 02020 (Happy anniversary!): Reflective Reactions*
1. Somewhere in the USA right now, there lives the last American who
will die of a coronavirus infection before a vaccine is available.
I'm hoping very hard not to be that person. My most recent
negative test was last Tuesday.
2. It's time to bring another word** from Paul Dickson's Words
book into heavier circulation: To wit:
zisterous (adj.): Relating to reform that
will be of the greatest benefit to the reformer.
The inspiration for this word was one Barry
Zister, who, as Connecticut Consumer Counsel, tried to persuade
phone companies to print their directories alphabetically
backward every other year in order to offset the perceived
competitive advantage of being first. While we may all
agree that that is something of a moot point these days, there
is nonetheless zisterous behavior afoot, if one looks
closely. The example that caught my attention recently was
Mississippi head football coach Lane Kiffin, who has advocated
for NCAA football players whose colleges or conferences have
postponed or canceled their seasons being granted the right to
transfer to other schools and play immediately.
I doubt that he's motivated primarily by concern for athletes,
and I doubt that the University of Alabama or LSU would be
adding too many gridiron refugees from the Midwest or West
Coast.
M-->
*--This sounds a little more Merchant Ivoryesque
than "Reactionary Reflections", which was also considered as a
title.
**--Following nephice, anthonize, and gourmet
parent. There's probably one or two others that
I've adopted in my daily speech and just not written about
here yet.
24 August 02020 (4 negative C-19 tests so far): Calendar Check
I have a feeling that the United Nations was not involved in
deciding this.
It's also my 52nd first day of school*, and I'm still no better at
handling them than I was at #1. It probably doesn't help that
my only class in this first half of a split semester isn't until
7:00 tonight, so there's a lot of waiting so far today.
M-->
*--Fun fact: Those 52 first days are in 7 different
decades. I expect to get one more before I'm through.
17 August 02020: The Countup Continues
Marvin Aday
was off by a bit. It turns out that one out of two is what
really ain't bad.
Here's something that Laurie and I realized this weekend: It's
been over 11 years since the two of us were living together and
both employed full-time. In the abstract, that doesn't seem
like too much to ask of the universe. Reality has its own
ambitions, though.
Recent and upcoming developments won't bring an end to this
streak. Whatever our "new normal" turns out to be, odds are
that it won't be both new and normal at the same time.
M-->
10 August 02020: Knock Knock! Who's
There? Opportunity!
If the current trends play out to their conclusion, what a great
gift for college athletes all over America this will be: A
semester free of competition, so that they might concentrate on
their studies without quite so much distraction.
Surely football players all across the land are welcoming this
opportunity to study. Freshmen are going to be able to
adjust to college academics right away and then shift into sports
mode when the games return.
Of course, that's just me. I could be completely mistaken*.
M-->
*--Tip o' the visor to Dennis Miller for that
closing.
29 July 02020 (Happy anniversary*!): News Roundup
Obituaries: Celebrity Deathwatch: Regis
Philbin 11, Olivia de Havilland 2.
I can't really quibble with the winner of this forced matchup, but
I kind of feel like the margin of victory should have been
smaller.
Sports: In and around the Seattle Kraken and Charlotte FC
announcing their names and the Washington Football Team
introducing a stopgap moniker, last Thursday was a big day in
nicknaming.
I'm fairly neutral on "Kraken"--I'm not sure that
Scandinavian mythology is all that applicable to a team
in the American Northwest, but if it works for them, so be it.
It would be nice if some more MLS teams had actual
nicknames--other than "United", which graces 3 franchises,
that is.
And I really want to see "Washington Football Team" show up
in onscreen graphics. Frequently and vividly, if that's
not too much trouble.
Entertainment: After way too much thinking, there are two
Emile Arturi Award winners this year. Will & Grace,
which was predictable and also the show's second win (the Statue
of Liberty sequence clinched it), and Modern Family.
MF's final episode was a strong argument for 45 minutes of
closing material and 15 minutes of clips as a sendoff. The
show did very well wrapping up in-progress storylines, but there
wasn't enough material to fill out a full hour, and so we endured
the dog video sequence and the figure skating trophy
material. I admit to having overthought this for a couple of
months; my last re-viewing settled the matter. It may well
turn out to be that MF is the line dividing winners from
non-winners going forward--the decision was that close.
M-->
*--The 55th anniversary of Medicare, of
course. Also the 25th anniversary of something much more
important.
20 July 02020 (Happy birthday yesterday and today!): Observations
From Plan C
1. It's vaguely amusing to be in a
moderately-sized crowd when everyone gets the same text message at
once, as happened to us last Monday at 4:44 PM when the governor's
updated mask order came down. Lots of chirping, buzzing, and
beeping, all at once.
2. Northern Michigan has an interesting brand of resistance to
masks. Some of it is surely based in right-wing thinking,
some in a general independence of spirit that prevails up that
way, and some, certainly, in a bit of resentment at official
regression--since that part o' the state was doing better than the
southern sector in controlling Covid-19.
3. This coin shortage is getting more amusing by the day.
Corollary: If something is served in a waffle cone, you shouldn't
be paying for it with a credit card.
M-->
10 July 02020 (Happy birthday!): A Sporting Observation
As someone who follows sports team nicknames
more than is usual or healthy, the whole escalation of the NFL
Washington franchise's nickname has caught my attention. For
better or worse, this includes reading I'net comment sections
where people who think they're funny propose alternate nicknames.
Whatever the new nickname is, I feel confident is saying it's not
going to be anything even remotely satirical.
That may be a bad thing, but it'll almost certainly be a more
reasonable nickname.
M-->
8 July 02020 (Happy birthday!): Nephice-Adjacent News
1. I am quite certain that none of my nephices
know anything about my involvement with the SAT, and I don't see
that information ever reaching them, so that won't be showing up
in a tell-all book in the 02040s.
2. New Mexico is a wonderful state, but even I don't want to spend
14 days quarantined there. Today would have been the
beginning of that. So we canceled our vacation Plan B last
week. Plan C starts Monday, if all goes well. How this
affects nephice Xmas presents will be determined on the road
somewhere.
M-->
2 July 02020 (Happy birthday!): Celebrity Deathwatch: Over-90
Division
Carl Reiner: 9 breaking news emails. (This
is the best online obituary I've seen. This
and that
tie for second.)
Hugh Downs: 4.
In the steel-cage death match between nonagenarians, youth (98)
triumphs over experience (99).
M-->
24 June 02020: What Was Fourth On That List?
The Battle Creek Public Schools are running some radio ads around
here to alert parents to upcoming kindergarten
registration. Three young children (or actors
portraying them) are extolling the exciting times of
kindergarten. The first two are reasonable enough: "We get
to play outside." and "We get to go on field trips.". The
third:
"We get to spell words!"
Gotta be honest, I'm not sure how that's a draw.
M-->
23 June 02020: Notes From A War(m) Zone
In the ongoing drama that is the temperature in
my office, we hit 96.5° this morning. My desk and chair were
hot to the touch when I got here. The hallway
temperature is currently 92.8°, so it's not like I've really got
an effective heat sink to assist in cooling things down toward
bearable. My office windows a) do not open, and b) look out
onto an enclosed atrium that is also quite steamy these days.
The days of "Will it really break 90 in here?" seem like eons ago.
Alex Trebek: The value of an essential worker
in Silver City, New Mexico.
Me: What is 37½¢?
A.T.: Correct!
Why do I know this?
Laurie and I, having had our original vacation plans disrupted by
Covid-19, are plotting a road trip for next month. I found
the Web site for a hotel I was considering in Silver City to be
remarkably non-functional, and so was forced to deal with a human
being. In the back-and-forth that ensued, mostly me trying
to reconcile the online rate with what the agent was quoting me,
she asked if either Laurie or I was an essential worker. I
responded honestly, that I'm a professor and Laurie is a hospital
librarian*. These professions qualified under their
definition ("Professor" doesn't always rise to that level, in my
very limited experience.).
In the recalculation, our room rate dropped, by 75¢. For 2
essential workers.
M-->
*--Furlough does not change this fact.
2 June 02020 (Happy birthday tomorrow!): Cover Art, Part 3
Here's the cover art for book #3, for the benefit of those who don't
look at the Facebook (Hi, Monica!).
Looks like we're on pace for an early fall
appearance.
M-->
28 May 02020: Scattered Thoughts On Scattered Times
When the interior temperature reaches the FM radio band,
it's time to go outside. Such is the situation in my
office these days. It might be a reach to blame that on
Covid-19, but something is not right here. The
appropriate authorities have been notified, but it was well
over 80°F when I got here a little past noon today, and the
temperature has not gone down. Yesterday, I bugged out
at 89.1°--I was slightly curious to see if it'd break 90 in
here, but wasn't interested enough to sweat it out.
Literally.
I thought we'd been through this before with my original
Discover card*, but...
People of the world: My identity is not
worth stealing.
Someone did some good legwork (details suppressed to
discourage imitators, but it was impressively attentive to
detail) and applied for unemployment benefits in my name,
which were approved. Various authorities have been
notified; we shall see what happens.
Something you don't expect to hear when entering a bicycle
shop and speaking with the technician/clerk:
We're out of bikes. So is Walmart
and the other bike shop in town.
I was looking to buy a new bicycle, but the supply chain has
been profoundly disrupted. I'll be checking back in
early July.
It's been over two months since I've had a glass of ice
water with a slice of lemon in it. I know I can make
that at home; I just don't.
M-->
*--Odd fact: I still have that card's number
memorized, but haven't committed my new D-Card number to memory,
and this was about 18 years ago.
20 May 02020: Nothing Like Midland, Of Course
With the recent rains in southern Michigan, we're back to watching
for backyard flooding. This picture tells (most of) the story:
Ordinarily, the backyard here is not a
swim-up facility due to the retaining wall, which here is still
above water. Upstream a bit, though, the river is above
the grass, enough to let the waterfowl onto dry land without
having to leap or fly. One can see a tiny breach of the
wall over to the left of the biggest goose, but they made their
way over from an easier access point.
M-->
30 April 02020: The Beginning Of The End (For Now)
So it's the end of another semester around here
(senior grades were due at noon today; Virtual
Commencement is Saturday). Though I've probably
accomplished more this term than most other terms since I got into
this racket, it doesn't feel that way. Chalk that up to
isolation and the stresses of remote emergency teaching, which is
a better name for the last 7 weeks than online teaching. The
latter involves a lot more careful planning than we had time for
this year.
On a bigger scale: I have long resisted the notion that the future
must inevitably be dystopian, as it is so often depicted in
popular culture (The Hunger Games, Divergent, Snowpiercer
[apparently], and so forth). Bleak prospects for the coming
years may make for more compelling drama, but a lot of people seem
to have recently surrendered to that notion in real life.
What I also find amusing is that future dystopias frequently
feature overcrowding as a big part of the problem (Terra Nova,
to name another one).
Missed that one, folks.
M-->
15 April 02020: Dispatch From An Insecure Fully-Disclosed
Location
In and around all of the new regulations
surrounding life in the first half of 02020, I found this one
amusing: There's a geographic area that is requiring masks on
anyone over 5 years old in public. There are, of course,
exceptions, and one of them is "Anyone entering a bank or credit
union". This makes a great deal of sense, which contrasts it
with a lot of new rules that we're all navigating.
Reminds one of the observation that the most difficult job is bank
guard in Alaska. In the words of Dennis Miller: "You got
twenty people in the joint, and they're all wearing ski masks."
This may not exactly be the bright line between reason and madness
that I'm still hoping to discover as we roll with this pandemic,
but perhaps one can see that line from here.
M-->
13 April 02020 (Happy birthday!*): (The
Continuing Search For) Whimsy Amidst The Madness**
I checked my credit union's online banking service today on an
unrelated matter, and discovered that Laurie and I will be
receiving our stimulus check via direct deposit on...April 15.
Perfect.
This has been another in the continuing saga "You couldn't make
this up; it'd've seemed too farfetched to take seriously". I
like to think that some IRS functionary engineered a large wave of
checks to drop in the 15th, but even if it's just the luck of the
draw, it's amusing.
Back to social distancing (I keep a 6-foot ruler in my office in
the very unlikely event that someone stops by and needs to be kept
properly at bay) and sheltering more or less in place.
That said, if it turns out that three of the things you most like
to do in life are eating in restaurants, shopping at nonessential
businesses, and shaking hands, you have my sympathy.
M-->
*--And, as always, happy half-birthday and happy
one-third birthday.
**--Parenthetical in place because I'm trying to write post titles
that sound like they could be Merchant Ivory films.
9 April 02020: Fourish Weeks In
I'm currently wrapping up my fourth week of
teaching courses online that weren't originally supposed to be
online, which means that my students are in their fourth week of
taking such classes. If there's a guide for students on how
to take online classes--especially synchronous online classes
where there's a camera pointed at you, I haven't seen it, and
someone should write one.
Here's my contribution:
If you wouldn't do it in an in-person class,
don't do it in an online class.
Specifically, and all based on experience:
Don't log in to your online class from bed.
Keep your dog or cat out of the room when you're in class.
Pants are not optional.
I'm sure there will be other revelations to come. Of
course, only three weeks remain, so time is short unless this
new order continues into the fall semester. My summer
online classes have always been asynchronous and camera-free,
so these rules don't mean much in that environment. If
someone is taking statistics pants-free, there's no good way
for me to know about it, and so I would not presume to object.
M-->
25 March 02020: An Opportunity Missed, But Probably Not Lost
A few years back, I was toying with the idea of
writing a book on the mathematics of sports betting, using the
logic that wagering on sports was likely to be legalized
nationwide, which might spark some increased interest in that
brand of math.
Things moved a little too quickly for me, and I shelved that
idea. Part of the reason is that sports betting was
legalized earlier than I expected, and as a result, a number of
books on the subject came out more quickly than I'd've been able
to write one. Part of it is that I found another avenue for
my research that wound up becoming my next book.
In light of the current sports gambling landscape, it's probably
better that I didn't. When Division
II soccer in Aruba is near the top of the menu in American
sports books, it's safe to say that scholarly analysis of the
wagers would be far less in demand*.
Plus, I know next to nothing about Aruban
soccer--though I'm willing to go there and learn.
In the meantime, I'm wrapping up the replacement for this
hypothetical book, which is due to the publisher next week and
which should be out around Labor Day.
M-->
*--Not that it was starting with a huge base of
interest, of course.
24 March 02020: More Random Thoughts
5. Tomorrow was supposed to be the day that my Honors students and
I trekked north to the Soaring Eagle Casino.for
an in-depth comparison of gaming theory and practice.
In a really amusing coincidence, it will also be the day that the
last remaining open commercial casinos in America will close
due to the current pandemic. That batch of casinos is in
Deadwood, SD. They'll be shutting down at noon MDT
tomorrow--which, due to the logistics of time zones, is almost
exactly the time that we'd've been rolling up to the SEC.
There are still evidently 16 tribal casinos that remain open and
will do so past 2 PM EDT tomorrow. They seem to be very
small slot arcades, though--possibly, one might speculate, on the
order of Nevada's Moapa
Paiute Travel Plaza. I'm guessing that their fireworks
shop, at a minimum, is still open. It's convenient that they
have a designated launch zone right outside--set up, of course, at
an appropriately safe distance from the gas pumps.
6. This
piece came out last month, before the new normal that we're
going to be dealing with, one way or another, for at least the
rest of 02020. I find it to be a pretty accurate description
of the President's motivations even before the pandemic.
It's certainly not less accurate now.
7. My new passport arrived in last Saturday's mail. Perhaps
someday I'll get to use it.
22 March 02020: Random Thoughts From An Insecure Undisclosed
Location
1. It's kind of amusing to think that a gathering of the extended
Clan Bollman (n = 23) would run afoul of proclamations on maximum
gathering populations.
3. If they take "social media" away at the same time, I, for one,
would not object.
4. In and around everything that's going on (RIP x 2), I am reminded
of the wise words of Melanie Chartoff*, from the ABC TV show Fridays,
sometime in December 1980. These lyrics have been updated for
the first three months of 02020, and should be sung to the tune of Auld
Lang Syne:
Let 2020 be forgot And in the past be tucked. For all of us would surely say That 2020 sucked.
The year still has 284 days to redeem itself, but I'm not liking its
chances.
M-->
*--More likely one of Fridays' writers, but
that's not something I want to try tracking down right now.
15 March 02020 (Beware!): Blindfolded And Searching In A Dark
Room For A Black Cat That Isn't There
I'm sure that the University of Bologna (est.
01088) was affected by the Black Plague pandemic way back in the
day. If their faculty had left some notes about what they
did to cope with that medical unpleasantness back in the
mid-01300's, a lot of us who teach college students might have
easier going right now.
And so the muddling through begins.
M-->
12 March 02020: Unexpected Outbreak of Reason
The sports cancellations are starting to happen. Live long
enough, and you'll see everything.
That said, I have not yet seen everything, so I expect to be around
for quite a while longer.
M-->
11 March 02020 (Happy birthday!): Waiting On The Inevitable
I'm waiting to see the first major university with enough guts to
cancel all of its upcoming athletic events for the duration of their
moving classes online* in reacting to Covid-19. I expect that I'll be waiting for quite some time.(Update 12 March 02020: Okay, that didn't happen.)
M-->
*--"Moving classes online" is not the simple process that some
college administrators (none here, yet) seem to believe it is, by
the way.
All without spending a dollar campaigning or any time in that
attractive overseas territory which is home to one of the
least-visited national parks in the whole NPS system.
On the list of industries that have been
seriously damaged by the rise of technology, add "postcards".
That surprised me a little bit this past week. While in Las
Vegas on an official school function, I was looking for a
particular type of postcard that Laurie wanted to send back to the
Midwest*. This proved quite challenging, with one gift shop
employee blaming "all those iPhones" for the steep dropoff in
postcard supply. Not just the kind I was looking for, but
pretty much anything.
There may be some merit to that claim.
I found what we were looking for in a "vintage memorabilia" bin at
one of my preferred gambling supply houses, but the shortage of
postcard racks in gift shops was rather unexpected.
M-->
*--A task for which Laurie was well-prepared,
having packed exactly the right number of postcard-rate
stamps. No
Brazilian, she.
9 February 02020: Anyone Who Thinks That This Is Not The Best
Time In Human History To Be Alive Is Wrong
Here's why: I recently got a new office
computer, which required a lot of work backing up my old computer
files for migration to the new machine.
This transition is not well-managed around here. In the
past, this would've meant scattering files across very full
network drives, flash drives, and the odd writable CD, with the
hope that nothing important would be lost.
This time around, I went out and got a 2-terabyte external hard
drive, which took on everything on my computer with room to spare
and in under 5 hours of copy time.
By way of context: At my previous employer, we once got two new
desktop machines for the department whose hard drives had 128
megabytes of storage each. Our reaction to that was "Why
would anyone ever need that much storage?" In our admittedly
weak defense, this was before digital cameras or the World Wide
Web were really very much of a thing.
My new drive is the equivalent of about 15,625 of those computers,
and it fits in a shirt pocket.*
The fact that such technological wonders exist, and that fact
alone**, confirms that this is clearly the right time to be alive.
M-->
*--That size reference might have more meaning if
I frequently (or even occasionally) wore shirts with
pockets. I don't recall the last time I wore a button-down
shirt that wasn't a Scout uniform. Most of my golf shirts
are pocket-free.
**--There are a few other reasons, but this one is all I
currently need.
2 February 02020: One Never Knows...
when certain information might be useful. In this case, it
took over 40 years.
(Disclaimer: I'm writing this entry entirely from
memory. I don't know what's on the I'net about this
material, nor do I want to check before this joins it.)
Back in the late 01970s, ABC broadcast a short-lived TV show
called Almost Anything Goes! which featured competition in
a variety of odd stunts from teams representing small towns
(approximate population 7000-12,000ish) around the USA.
Charlie Jones and Lynn Shackleford were the announcers, and Regis
Philbin joined them at some point. Among the cities
competing were Burrillville, RI, Culpeper, VA, Mariana, FL,
Banning, CA, and Boulder City, NV. The Alabama State
Championship in season 2 saw teams from Andalusia, Brewton, and
Opp face off.
Also on that list was Hammond, Louisiana. It somehow stuck
in my teenage brain, from the broadcast, that the town was host to
an annual strawberry festival. The team might have been
nicknamed the "Strawberries", and the events may have been held in
Strawberry Stadium--I am less sure about those details.
Okay, so there's a lot of clutter in my memory. This has
long been the case. Yesterday, though, I was interviewing
prospective students for Albion's* Honors Program, and one of the
five students I spoke with was from Hammond. My first
question to him was "Is the strawberry festival still a thing down
there?"
He was, to put it mildly, very impressed that I'd heard of
Strawberry Fest. One might even say blown away. I
didn't go into the details of why I know that--no sense in scaring
off good students--but he's got a good tale for the folks back
home about his trip north.
If he enrolls here, I think I deserve a finder's fee.
M-->
*--Side note: One other thing that sticks in my
memory about AAG is a letter to the Detroit Free
Press "Action Line" column asking if the show would ever
tape an episode in Michigan. This person wanted to
compete, and ended their letter with the line "What's my first
move?". AL's reply started out with "To someplace
like Albion or Sturgis.", which connects up nicely to the home
of The Markives.
27 January 02020: Back In Advance
With the appropriate and necessary word changes presumed, I think
it's time to bring this back. From 02009:
M-->
16 January 02020: News Of Numismatics
While I was checking out at a convenience store
this morning, the cashier asked me if I'd be okay receiving a $1
coin among my change.
The answer to that question shall always be "Yes". (I'd've
hoped for an Eisenhower coin*, but these were the more recent
"golden dollars".)
In the brief chat that followed, it turned out that she had a
bunch of those in her cash drawer, really didn't like them, and
hoped to get rid of them as soon as possible
So I offered to buy her out, and walked with 6 more coins.
These 7 coins are at once a reminder of the failure of the U.S.
government to support the good idea that is a $1 coin by pulling
$1 bills from circulation at the same time** and an example of how
sometimes it's very easy to make someone's day better with very
little effort.
The ones that don't land in my collection (there are several
new-to-me Presidential dollars in the stack) are probably going to
Las Vegas next month. Dollar coins are very useful for
tipping casino beverage servers.
M-->
*--I have three of those on my desk, including one that's
gold-plated, for use in class. A coin-flipping exercise
lands better when the coin is large and very visible.
**--See Canada for an example of how this works.
13 January 02020: Despite The Revolution
While we fought a war to get away from these people, I am
nonetheless drawn ever so slightly into an observation on the
current madness among the British royal family.
And I find myself siding with Prince Harry on this one.
The man is #6 in line to the throne, which means we're not going
to see King Henry IX unless there's a spectacularly massive
cataclysm. For which I do not for a moment wish, nor, I am
sure, does he.
That understood, it makes a lot of sense to me that the
obligations of royalty are being laden upon him with no real
potential of even a brief taste of the perks of the top job.
If that means that he wants to trade some of the money for a
relaxation of his duties...well, I can't argue against that.
M-->
8 January 02020: What is "Tahiti Graffiti Treaty"?
It's evidence that the writing staff for Jeopardy!
are having some fun working up the answers for the current
Greatest of All Time tournament.
Also on that list: "What is The Facts of Life, the Universe, and
Everything bagel?"
I haven't heard the first match yet, though my trivia team and I
watched most of it on a big screen with the sound off last
night. Lip-reading the contestants was at times less tricky
than one might initially fear, although it certainly helps if you
have the correct answer and are just reading for confirmation.
In hearing about David
Stern and Don
Larsen's deaths yesterday, I wondered, as I do when hearing
about deaths that occur on 1 January, if they realized that they
had made it to the new year.
I always hope that people in this circumstance did, in part
because I like the notion of a "final accomplishment" at the
end I also like the fact that dying on 1 January messes up
easy age calculations. On a return visit, here's xkcd, this time from 30 December
02019:
As someone whose age via subtraction is subject to off-by-one
errors 363 days out of 365*, I approve of this kind of
celebration.
M-->
*--364 out of 366 this year, of course.
2 January 02020 (Where's the Sealab?):
On Marking Time
One thing that seemed way too overblown this
New Year's Eve, and way more overblown that it was 10 years ago,
was the chorus of pedants arguing that 02020* doesn't really mark
the start of a new decade.
Yes, it's true that if we're measuring from 00001 C.E., there's a
year yet to go before a "new" decade starts. There's
something different going on here.
Speaking of the 02010s as a decade simply means the set of 10
years of the form 0201x, as x runs from 0 through 9. That's
not the same as the 202nd decade of the common era.
Would that many other disputes could be so easily settled**.
M-->
*--If you're Y10K compatible and type the way I do,
this year is kind of fun to type. Not unlike the word
"blackjack", which I type more than is usual.
**--By reasoned thinking, that is, not by appeal to VH1.
2 January 02020 (Happy New Year!):
Introducing Living The Circuit
One thing I've been thinking about recently is the idea of
"living the circuit", which is my term for successfully living in
each of the 10 decades from the 00s through to the 90s--though not
necessarily in that order, of course. Where you start
matters. This connects to a brief discussion some of us had
at Christmas last year about how many decades we've been alive
in. (Why we were talking about that escapes me a little.)
Everybody born in the 01930s just completed the circuit yesterday,
and good on them.
I've been toying with connecting this up with another coinage I
premiered on The Markives
a few years back and issuing an edict to the following effect*:
If you have lived the circuit, you're
allowed to bite the holly.
While I still object strongly enough to early holiday intrusion
not to go there, I admit that it rolls well off the tongue.
M-->
*--Credit for this idea goes in part to Patton Oswalt, who has
spoken on the notion of new rights accruing to people as they
age.
Click the photo
to return to the Bollman family main page.
The
opinions
expressed in this page/section are strictly those of the
page's author. The contents of this page have not been
reviewed or approved by Albion College.
The Markives for 02020
